Oliver believes that Obama should make good on his promise to close the prison now or simply move it to the U.S.
+ READ ARTICLEThanks to Donald Trump and Billy Bush, John Oliver had a lot of material to work with on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight. However, his main story focused on a topic he has covered before, but certainly wasn’t making headlines this week or even a particularly hot topic in the election cycle: Guantanamo Bay prison.
When he was running for President, Barack Obama promised he would close the prison during the first hundred days of his presidency. However as he nears the end of his second term, the prison remains open. According to Oliver, hundreds of prisoners taken during the war on terror have been released or transferred out of so-called Gitmo, and now, only 61 prisoners remain.
One former prisoner referred to his time in Gitmo as akin to the U.S. version of the Harry Potter prison, “Azkaban” while another found comfort in the lyrics of a Whitesnake song, and as Oliver noted, “You know you are miserable when you’re finding solace in a f—ing Whitesnake song.”
Oliver believes that Obama should make good on his promise to close the prison now or simply move it to the U.S., because if he doesn’t do it before he leaves office, as Oliver noted, “The keys to Azkaban will be handed over to whoever succeeds him.” Oliver said there is still a good chance that Obama’s successor will be Donald Trump — and he is definitively not a fan of the Republican presidential nominee. “If we don’t shut it down, future President Trump will throw whoever he wants in Guantanamo,” he said, and for the record, Oliver is worried that Trump might have a cell lined up for him.